Rescuers learn how to use new equipment during drill in Camarillo storm drain

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Ventura County Fire Department personnel drop down one by one into a tunnel to train Thursday in Camarillo.

Karen Quincy Loberg

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Members of the Ventura County Fire Department's urban search and rescue team tested new closed-circuit breathing apparatus during training Thursday in an underground storm drain in Camarillo.

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Members of the Ventura County Fire Department's urban search and rescue team tested new closed-circuit breathing apparatus during training Thursday in Camarillo.

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Four members of the Ventura County Fire Department urban search and rescue team use new breathing apparatus that recycles the user's own breath.

Karen Quincy Loberg

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Mark Seastrom prepares a mannequin to be hoisted from an underground tunnel in Camarillo.

Karen Quincy Loberg

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Ventura County Fire Department urban search and rescue team members reach a car, where they find a dummy to extricate as part of a practice drill Thursday using new closed-circuit breathing apparatus.

Karen Quincy Loberg

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR
Firefighter Mike Harding (from left) and fire Capt. Barry Parker help Ventura County Fire Department urban search and rescue team members out of a manhole during training Thursday in Camarillo.

The mission was to rescue three people in two hours. Two were stuck in a vehicle after a crash at the end of a storm drain in Camarillo and another was stuck in a narrow tunnel. It was cold, dark and wet.

Aside from headlamps and ropes, the rescuers were equipped with special apparatus that allowed them to breathe for longer periods under strenuous circumstances and better communicate with their colleagues.

After slogging through mud and lifting 500-pound metal beams that obstructed the red Chrysler Plymouth, the three victims were hoisted back through a manhole.

"He's critical, he's not making much noise," Bill Nash, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, said of one victim.

But it was only a dummy, and this was an exercise.

The scenario was part of specialized training this week by the department's urban search-and-rescue team. On Thursday, about a dozen firefighters, engineers and captains tried out new equipment as part of a three-day session on responding to incidents in tunnels and other confined spaces.

Two captains and two engineers participated in initial training near Seattle in October and were charged with spreading their knowledge at home.

The Seattle training was paid through a $121,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Nash said. Through the grant, the Ventura County Fire Department also was able to purchase closed-circuit breathing apparatus, and the new equipment is being tried out this week.

Nash said the department had a "wake-up call" after the 2008 Metrolink crash that killed 25 and injured about 100 in Chatsworth. The crash occurred minutes before a commuter train was set to enter the longest tunnel in Ventura County, in the Santa Susana Pass.

The tunnel is 7,400 feet long, and fire equipment back then would have allowed emergency responders to go only 300 feet into it.

The Seattle training also covered work in "super-confined spaces" — skills rescuers can use if, for example, maintenance workers get stuck in tunnels at Lake Piru or Lake Casitas.

"There are a lot of confined-space environments around the county, places you wouldn't really think would have confined spaces," said fire engineer Brian Heath, who participated in the training Thursday.

"The biggest benefit of the (new apparatus) is the amount of time we can be in a hazardous environment."

During Thursday's drill, a smoke machine was used to simulate a limited-visibility environment, and glow sticks marked the way through the 800-foot storm drain.

"It's sort of like leaving breadcrumbs," Nash said.

Aside from yelling to each other, the rescuers also used horns to indicate when they would start or stop advancing through the drain.

In preparing the two teams for the exercise, fire Capt. Mel Lovo, who participated in the Seattle training, said, "You're in a completely dark environment. It's kind of like walking off a cliff because you don't know what's coming. And there is also potential for collapse."

Lovo said Los Angeles city and county fire departments have had the closed-circuit apparatus for years and were invited to Ventura County to help rescuers learn how to use the gear.

"We have to know what we can do," said fire Capt. Bob Schuett, "and this training environment is the best way to do that."